Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (7 page)

Markus had always felt sorry for Hector. But what good did that do now? he had asked Amos. For he hadn’t been much of a friend himself.

Amos had only nodded his head and patted his grandson’s hand.

Rumour stated that the load was rigged, that the ship had been paid off to leave, to take the evidence out to sea. Just as the clouds swirled over Markus’s head, so did rumour. Not only was what had happened to Hector a terrible tragedy but it was romantic, especially to the girls, whom Markus himself wanted to impress.

“But,” Markus ventured after arriving at Isaac’s house and seeing all the youngsters sitting about and drinking beer in the yard, calling out to old adversaries as if they all were bonded together forever, “my granddad says if he did hook on, he would still have to hook on right or the load wouldn’t have lifted and maybe even would have dropped before it got to the boat. Or as it swung over it.”

“There’s a hundred ways to do it,” Joel Ginnish said, coming to the door and looking down at the boy as he made the motion of a knot. And everyone looked at Markus as if he was making things needlessly
complicated because he was old Amos’s grandson. Joel’s words came from Joel, and that is why they were taken seriously. At that moment, Joel could have said anything and it would work to his advantage. So he stood there solemn and dignified while he spoke.

Yet Markus knew that Joel Ginnish was no expert. He had never worked at anything. When Markus thought about it, the statement “There’s a hundred ways to do it” was not true at all. In fact, others there who had worked a boat or two would know that it wasn’t. But none were bold enough to contradict the statement. And what they were saying about Roger Savage was that he was a criminal. Not just stupid or blundering, but a real criminal who wanted to kill people.

“We’ve got to get even,” someone said, “for Hec,” and people began to nod. And many began to call the boy Hec instead of Hector then and there.

Markus, with his very limited experience, still knew Hector’s death would have had to involve prior knowledge and premeditation if it was more than an accident. Besides that—and it was a big besides—as long as Hector had stayed on his side of the hold, away from the drop, he would have been fine. And who in the yard would have known that Hector would step out as the load was coming down?

“No,” Isaac said to Markus, putting his hand on his shoulder, “the load ricocheted and killed him. Let’s not destroy his memory by saying it was his fault.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Markus said, knowing the idea that he wanted to be negative about Hector’s memory seemed more plausible than the fact that he might be telling the truth.

The year before, Isaac and Markus and Amos had all been part of a big, happy family. They had done things together, riding about in Isaac’s Mercury, for Isaac had wanted to be known as a friend of the chief and a friend of the chief’s grandson. They had gone to the gravel pit and Isaac had let them shoot his .30-30 rifle at Custer—meaning, bottles. Last winter they had even shot a moose—well,
they
didn’t, but Isaac had—and Isaac had showed Markus how to hunt.

Isaac had been over to Amos’s house for a beer or two to talk about the recreation centre and the Skilsaws there. Then Joel had come along. Joel suddenly acted as if he were instrumental in everything. He told people who Isaac was going to see and who he wasn’t. He carried Little Joe Barnaby around on his shoulder. Joel had boxed in the Golden Gloves in 1979, so Markus was a little shy around him.

“Have you ever been in trouble?” Markus had asked.

“Oh, I been accused of lots of stuff,” Joel would say, and kids liked him all the more.

That night, Markus went to bed thinking his grandfather was not in the best position and not the most favourite on the reserve anymore. Isaac was no man to fool with; he would do what he had to do in a crisis. And it certainly seemed like a crisis now. Markus did not know what to do. He could pray like his mother had, but he was too embarrassed to do that too.

Markus had read C. S. Lewis’s “The Inner Ring” in a course he had taken that past year, from one of the teachers who still felt it wise to teach classics, from Cicero to Burke, and had suddenly realized what it was that was bothering him. This very essay C.S. Lewis had written about the willingness to forgo a certain integrity in order to belong to a group was dangerously close to describing exactly what was happening with him and the other boys. And he had found this out one afternoon.

Joel had set up a ring out back of his house so they could learn to box. He was teaching the boys to feint and jab, and teaching them to move laterally, and for the shorter boxers to come inside, to utilize their upper bodies and throw the uppercut. The men stood around watching this, the broad heat of midday on their backs and shoulders; the women watched too, yelling at times to their sons or boyfriends. Joel himself smiled at Markus and waved him over, and all the men and women turned toward him.

“No, I won’t do it today,” Markus said with a shrug.

Joel smiled. “Chicken—just like yer old man.”

“You mean my grandfather?” Markus said.

“No, I mean David, yer old man—chicken.”

Markus felt this was the meanest thing he had heard about his family. He had heard other mean things, but this was perhaps the meanest so far. He stood at the side of the lane and watched, and the men turned their backs on him. Markus hated what was said about his father, but he did not want to go over there. He felt it was because he was the grandson of Amos that some of the other boys said they wanted to get him into the ring. Even his great friends Andy and Tommie Francis, who were each older than he was by a year or two.

He was not frightened—it was worse than that. He was embarrassed that these friends, whom he had once laughed and played baseball with, now said they wanted to get him into the ring because Joel Ginnish was walking about the reserve, as Amos joked, as the big sheriff.

So Markus knew he would have to fight his friends or stay away. He chose to stay away—for now—hoping that this would allow him to save face.

Old Amos, hardly able to read or write, had said that this was what would happen. That is, that men would form this alliance and rely upon others to tell them what was right or wrong. So old Amos, without having read C.S. Lewis, was worried about the same thing as Markus.

But, Markus thought, Isaac had proven himself in a hundred battles with authority, with the RCMP, with crass and obnoxious legislation. And now everyone wanted justice, so what was wrong with that? Was Isaac fair? He was as fair as the white people were. Was he kind? He was as kind as they had been to his own father, who had been falsely accused and hanged in 1955. Did Isaac’s father’s death inflame the idea of injustice in Isaac? Of course it did. Had he sought revenge? Most certainly! Would he use other whites to call down to nothing people like Roger Savage? Sure. Much of what was said about Roger
was probably true. Did it matter if it was proven? So much was unproven against the Micmac band, and what recourse had they had? So to start a war against Roger and use psychology that the whites would fear was fine by Isaac. That is, from now on, no one was allowed to say that Roger was innocent. And Joel Ginnish, acting as Isaac’s right-hand man, let Markus know this himself.

“We cannot call him innocent,” Joel said. “The white man is not innocent.”

“But what if Roger
was
innocent?” was the question Markus continually asked, because it is what Amos had told him to ask.

“Ask it as you would for any Indian friend of yours,” Amos said.

But the answer came: So what if, in this one instance, truth was not cut and dried? Why did it ever have to be? If Roger Savage was singled out, that was okay, for how many First Nations men had been singled out? And to belong, to be inserted into the inner circle, to be loved by those who believed they were sweeping their broad wings toward ideological change—beside that, what did a Roger Savage matter? That Roger was beginning to be called a racist after the funeral, what did it matter? Roger had visited the grave of Hector Penniac—everyone knew about this. For everything he did was now seen.

Joel went about saying that those who wanted to join Isaac were fine. Those who did not want to join were then against him. And if you were against him, then you were against the First Nations themselves. And the First Nations would then stand against you.

This was all whispered, and yet there was such wonderful power and truth and sincerity in the whispers that Markus trembled.

Who, then, could go against Isaac’s new group, to halt this presumption? Or to even dare to call it presumption? Perhaps there was only one man on the six-hundred-person reserve brave enough to do so.

And that man was seventy-five-year-old Amos Paul, who had been given an honorary elders’ dinner just last year. This was the only man,
old and arthritic, who had hunted moose from the time he was a child, who had chased moose down in the winter air, who had fished on the sea and had laboured against discrimination and injustice, who had known both, who had fought in the battles of the Second World War, who had been decorated and then not allowed to enter the Legion with his regiment to have a beer with those his rifle had helped save—this man was the one who now looked across the withered fields and small houses, where every window told of tragedy and broken promises, and stared into the faces of Isaac and especially Joel and saw aggrandizement, not at the expense of Roger Savage—no, that was not the point—but at the expense of the band itself.

When Markus had come home that night from Isaac’s, the old man was sitting at the kitchen table, doing a jigsaw puzzle, and as always searching everywhere for the small piece he already held in his hand.

“He will have a right-hand man,” Amos said, not looking his way, but mulling over the puzzle.

“Who?”

“Who would Isaac want? Well?”

“I don’t know! Maybe Joel.”

Amos said nothing for a moment. Then, “No, he won’t
want
Joel, but he will need him.” He hemmed and hawed over the puzzle. “Joel. Do you know he steals out of our own nets and sells the fish?”

“Everyone says that,” Markus said.

Old Amos hemmed and hawed once more, and held the piece out and dragged it across the puzzle trying to find a place where it would fit.

“It’s true. He stole from Francis’s net and Ward’s, and he stole from mine—four big fish last week. And do you know who he sells them to?”

“No,” Markus said.

“He sells them to the Monk brothers, who sell them again up the road. That’s my fish he stole, and Mrs. Francis’s, who has all those
kids, and Denny Ward’s. And yet”—here he inserted the piece—“Joel is now chief appointment maker. So what am I to say?”

Then he added: “You remember that I have taken some pictures of the boat, and it is a very strange accident. Very strange all the way around.”

Two days after Isaac had invited those boys to his house and spoken of Hector’s death, Joel woke up early and went to the corner store to buy the paper. There was nothing in it about Hector that day—yet there was a Canadian Press report about the United Nations. Then he looked to see if his letter about his brother’s murder had been printed. It had not been.

Very upset with the lack of action, Joel took the ceremonial hunting-lodge spear right from the hunting lodge and threw it into a tree that Roger was standing beside, near the edge of a secondary pool where the river followed the bend, close to Micmac ground. Roger came out there each day to see if the salmon had made their way up after the Micmac nets were lifted. The grilse run would of course be bigger later on. The fish did not stay in these pools very long, but Roger could tell the strength of the run by seeing them, and decide on the number the band was catching. He did not mind the band catching them—his dispute was with Joel, who he believed took far too many. Roger took the spear out of the tree and was going to break it, but realizing how old it was he set it on the bar and walked away.

Hector had had nothing to do with Roger’s pools, but this was now seen by some as the reason for his death.

So by evening everyone on the reserve had heard of this act of defiance against the white man Roger Savage, who had taken their pools.

Markus wanted to think that his grandfather had somehow sanctioned all this action. But he soon knew that this was not the case. His grandfather only seemed old and bewildered.

In fact, the next evening the old man walked to the band council meeting that came after the spear throwing. Joel stood among them, accepting the congratulations of some boys, while the night smelled of sea salt and tar, one side door having been left open. Amos walked through the crowd and up to him.

“You should not have thrown that spear,” he said mildly, his right hand trembling slightly. “You might have hurt someone. And for what—a salmon pool that will come back to us for good in a year or two more? No, my boy, you should not have done that.” He fumbled about, looking from one face to the other. But there were no friendly faces.

Joel shrugged. “My brother’s dead,” he said, “and you’re worried about a spear thrown at a fuckin tree!” He was the first to leave, as if he did not want to disrespect himself by staying.

Other people turned away, and soon the old man was alone with Markus, who was waiting silently outside to drive him home.

“What happened, Granddad?” Markus asked.

“I do not know what I am supposed to do,” Amos said.

After the band meeting, back in Isaac’s smoky kitchen, some of the young men told Isaac that he was their chief.

Isaac held up his hand. “Give me time now,” he said, “to find a reasonable explanation.”

But the reasonable explanation was already there. More importantly, Isaac was already legendary. Not to use him in this crisis, not to exploit him, would be senseless. And each of the young men knew this would be part of the reasonable explanation that Isaac would discover.

So this was when the warrior group around Isaac was formed. It was only six or seven men, those who were the most trusted by him, those who were the more secretive and brave.